I personally believe that I’ve used every search term of any worth for my topic of interest. I wanted to see more on the topic of ageism as a priority for today, but as you’ll soon come to realize, that’s easier said than done.  Any new info is still useful either way.

Despite the pursuit of unturning every stone, I have limited myself quite overwhelmingly to the Academic Search Premier database. For the purposes of saturation, I want to make sure other databases aren’t hiding any finishing touches. To that end, every single source listed today stemmed from the Gale Research Institute in Communications and Mass Media, Gender Studies, and Diversity Studies.

 

SEARCH #1 – Gale Gender Studies Database
I began by simply searching “transgender” AND “ageism” as keywords. This yielded zero results! Searching for “transgender” AND “age” helped boost that figure to 68 results. I narrowed this down by adding NOT “HIV” as a subject term. This is because, if my previous searches have taught me anything, it’s that academia seems hyper fixated on that one LGBT issue to the exclusion of my actual topic of interest. This narrowed down my search down to 39 results. I then refined the search further to only include studies from 2009 onward, as there were some hopelessly outdated results in that original batch (Tewksbury, R., & Gagne, P., 1996). This narrowed my search to 34 results.

From this final batch, the most beneficial source was “Trans and Gender Diverse People’s Experiences and Evaluations with General and Trans-specific Healthcare Services: A Cross-Sectional Survey” (Burgwal, A., & Motmans, J., 2020).

 

SEARCH #2 – Gale Gender Studies Database
I wanted to make sure my bases are covered in terms of demographics and prevalence of gender diversity. As such, I searched “transgender” (subject term) AND “population” NOT “HIV” (keywords). As always, I also limited studies to being from 2009 onward. This only yielded 14 results.

The only result of significant worth was “A Community-based Study of Demographics, Medical and Psychiatric Conditions, and Gender Dysphoria/Incongruence Treatment in Transgender/Gender Diverse Individuals” (James, H.A., Chang, A.Y., Imhof, R.L. et al., 2020)

 

SEARCH #3 Gale Gender Studies Database
I searched “transgender” (subject term) AND “representation OR portrayal” (keywords). As always, I also relegated results to peer-reviewed journals from 2009 onward. “Portrayal” is a new keyword. I want to make sure I’m covering my bases with regard to terminology. This yielded 8 results. Many results were, once again, related to representation outside of America. These are interesting in their own right, but they’re not what I’m looking for.

A result which stood out to me was “Transgender Dispossession in Transparent: Coming Out as a Euphemism for Honesty” (Funk, S., Funk, J., 2016).

 

SEARCH #4 – Gale Communications and Mass Media Database
I wanted my final searches to relate specifically to age; however, the well of content regarding ageism is very dry. Searching “ageism” AND “representation OR portrayal” yields zero results on every single Gale Institute Database I tried. Searching “age” (subject term) AND “representation OR portrayal” (keywords) yields four results on the Communications and Mass Media Database. Those same parameters only yield one result on the Gender Studies Database. I then simplified my search to “transphobia” (subject term) AND “age” (keyword). This yielded zero results on both databases. Finally, I searched “transphobia” AND “age” (keywords) on the Communications and Mass Media Database, and I found one result.

The source is “Where is the Queerness in Games? Types of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Content in Digital Games” (Shaw, A., & Friesem, E., 2016). This source is certainly related to my topic at-hand, but this exercise has also convinced me to some degree that focusing on ageism is particular is a hopeless cause.

 

SEARCH #5 – Communications and Mass Media Database
Following in the footsteps of the previous source, I tried searching “transgender” AND “video games” (subject terms), but that yielded zero results. Relegating the search terms to keywords also yielded zero results. I then tried searching for “transgender” AND “video games” as keywords in the Communications and Mass Media Database, and that yielded two results. One was the aforementioned source, but the other source proved to be equally useful in quantifying transgender representation.

The source is “Counting Queerness in Games: Trends in LGBTQ Digital Game Representation, 1985-2005” (Shaw, A., Lauteria, E. W., Yang, H., Persaud, C. J., & Cole, A. M., 2019).

 

Conclusions

With all of these rigorous searches usually turning up fewer than 20 results, I can say with certainty that I’m approaching a saturation point in my research. The pool of content for what I want to study is rather shallow, and as a result, I’ll need to minimize ageism as a key component in my research proposal. More broadly, I believe tackling this subject simply as “How Transgender People Feel They Should be Represented in the Media Vs. How They’re Actually Represented” will improve my workflow. I still care about the age component, but there simply isn’t enough literature out there for an undergraduate like myself to latch onto.

Annotated Bibliography

Burgwal, A., & Motmans, J. (2020). Trans and Gender Diverse People’s Experiences and Evaluations with General and Trans-specific Healthcare Services: A Cross-Sectional Survey. International Journal of Impotence Research, 33(7), 679+. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A682282849/PPGB?u=klnb_fhsuniv&sid=bookmark-PPGB&xid=238fbd40

This source importantly categorizes transgender experiences on the basis of several blocking variables–most notably age. There is a plethora of useful tabes and figures refining subjects down to their most explicit details. The study does fall short in that studying age is not a priority. It also only includes subjects from various European nations, whereas my field of interest has always been more American. Nevertheless, it’s always useful to include more trans perspectives, including primary points of concern on a day-to-day basis.

 

Funk, S., Funk, J., (2016). Transgender Dispossession in Transparent: Coming Out as a Euphemism for Honesty. Sexuality & Culture 20, 879–905. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-016-9363-0

This article almost suffers from the opposite problem as many of my other sources in that it’s quite hyperspecific. With that said, this article does brush up on media analysis as it pertains to trans people. Specifically, the article illustrates what not to do when representing gender diverse characters. It uses “Transparent” by Joey Soloway as an example. This is an important step in understanding the precedent for representation going forward. Before understanding what to do, one must first understand what not to do.

 

James, H.A., Chang, A.Y., Imhof, R.L. et al. (2020). A Community-based Study of Demographics, Medical and Psychiatric Conditions, and Gender Dysphoria/Incongruence Treatment in Transgender/Gender Diverse Individuals. Biol Sex Differ 11, 55. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13293-020-00332-5

This article details the many predisposed issues that transgender people experience. It’s particularly helpful in detailing a basis for representation. The study consists of records for transgender healthcare patients in Olmsted County, Minnesota throughout a 40+ year period. Given the systematic sample, it is the closest thing to a blueprint for what experiences transgender people had ought to be represented by in media.

 

Shaw, A., & Friesem, E. (2016). Where is the Queerness in Games? Types of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Content in Digital Games. International journal of communication [Online], 3877+. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/viewFile/5449/1743

(A DOI code for this source is unavailable.) This is an in-depth grounded theory content analysis which seeks to categorize LGBT characters in video games. This representation includes transgender characters. Observations range from the relative lack of transgender characters compared to homosexual and bisexual characters, to the fact that many transgender women in video games are both written and voiced by cis male actors. Obviously, all of this data is important in diagnosing the best way to represent trans experiences.

 

Shaw, A., Lauteria, E. W., Yang, H., Persaud, C. J., & Cole, A. M. (2019). Counting Queerness in Games: Trends in LGBTQ Digital Game Representation, 1985-2005. International journal of communication [Online], 1544+. https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Counting+Queerness+in+Games%3A+Trends+in+LGBTQ+Digital+Game…-a0592665059

(A DOI code for this source is unavailable.) This article quantifies instances of queer representation in video games. It is another content analysis from the same researcher as the previous source. This article takes a more historiographical and demographical approach. All examples originate from 1985-2005. As a result, representation is categorized into its time period, its nation of origin, and trends therein.

 

Tewksbury, R., & Gagne, P. (1996). Transgenderists: Products of Non-Normative Intersections of Sex, Gender, and Sexuality. The Journal of Men’s Studies, 5(2), 105+. https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Transgenderists%3A+products+of+non-normative+intersections+of+sex,…-a019095215

(A DOI code for this old source is unavailable.) It’s worth keeping for posterity sake though. This article perfectly represents the frame-of-reference that many older transgender people have on account of the fact that it’s from 1996. It uses uncomfortable terminology, includes outdated ideas, and doesn’t properly understand the personal trans perspective very well. It’s an emblem of how far we’ve come!